


Scarcely Odd

by konoyo



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M, Selkies, Vague references to marine biology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-14
Updated: 2015-10-14
Packaged: 2018-04-26 10:11:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5000770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/konoyo/pseuds/konoyo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Never send a man to do a walrus' job. Or something of that nature.</p><p>Where Arthur really just wants to finish this project and move on to bigger and warmer places but neither Eames nor this walrus are cooperating.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scarcely Odd

**Author's Note:**

  * For [motetus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/motetus/gifts).



> I saw motetus' art (http://motetus.tumblr.com/post/130271726964/mating-behaviour-of-the-atlantic-walrus-odobenus) and this fic just fell out.

In the world of marine biology, there's really no such thing as competition. Everyone is working towards the same goal, namely understanding and conserving nature. No one wins any prizes for completing the most paperwork or tagging the most seals.

Arthur has to repeat this mantra to himself almost daily.

It isn't as if he's that competitive of a person, not to the point of being stupid at least, but if your coworker is miles ahead of you in almost everything, it's hard not to feel a bit frustrated. Your gorgeous, cocky British coworker. Arthur grinds his teeth and rows his boat out to sea, not even caring about the droplets that fall down onto his papers and electronics. His laptop has gotten over much more water damage than some stray water droplets which is why he had brought it. He wasn't expecting to scuba dive today, anyway and thank god for that.

Back to Eames. Even with Eames' dubious "connections", he somehow outpaces Arthur in volume of work and speed of number crunching. "Well, wasn't it obvious?" he tends to ask Arthur after Arthur very understandably expresses surprise at the far reaching conclusions Eames is drawing from a disorganized table of raw data. Even if the calculations usually check out in the end, it still rubs Arthur rather the wrong way. Or Eames' almost prophetic knowledge of the locations of seal herds or dolphin packs. Or just his smirking face.

Eames is the reason Arthur is stuck rowing himself out into the North Atlantic in weather that's barely above freezing. Jan Mayen island isn't a tropical destination by any stretch of the imagination. Though the snow capped Beerenburg volcano looks imposing from his distance, this isn't the way Arthur would prefer to spend July. In fact, he's a little bit underdressed for the weather, having somehow miscalculated the temperature drop that 8 degrees to the north of the Faroe Islands and in the middle of the ocean would give you.

Why, oh, why couldn't they have chosen to research something tropical? Not that Arthur has anything against seals, of course, but it's just so cold. They could be on Hawaii tracking the local shark population instead of this. Where Arthur would have known he was going in the water instead of being surprised to find out that the landing beach is basically inaccessible by vehicle or foot. He wouldn't have only brought his nice leather boots if he'd known.

Fortunately, the rowing warms him up and he locates the pack of seals with ease, which gives him enough time to feel exceptionally proud of himself as he ogles them through his binoculars and takes notes. Eames hadn't thought to arrange himself a permit to stay at the protected island citing getting the information off the meteorologists that lived up here. Bah. What would meteorologists know about seals? If all of Eames' connections are meteorologists, he's been very, very lucky thus far.

He is suitably distracted by taking notes and organizing his data table for the next couple of hours that he only notices that the boat is tipping when he all but slides off his seat, immediately dropping what he's doing to brace against the sides. There's a huge walrus levering itself onto the far side of the boat and Arthur's heart starts beating double time.

"Shit," he says out loud, because if there's one huge male currently pushing his boat underwater, there's probably a herd of them somewhere. And this one is only huge compared to Arthur anyway - he's actually rather small for a male. A runt of the litter? Maybe he is alone. But it's the summer. Why would even a lone male be this far south right now? Why would he be this far south ever? The walrus, meanwhile, drops a squirming fish on some of Arthur's notes and looks at Arthur expectantly. If it had eyebrows, they would be raised. Arthur belatedly remembers that he hadn't brought lunch. But no matter how hungry he might be, he's not eating a raw, cold fish.

Arthur scowls back. "You're sinking my boat, buddy," he tells the walrus uselessly. Walruses probably can't understand english. Norwegian, if anything.

Eames floats to the front of Arthur's mind. The bastard is fluent in both Norweigan and Finnish where Arthur can barely string two words together. "Nei," he tells the walrus who's squirming his way farther into the boat. "Ekki." He'll try anything to keep from drowning.

The walrus snorts at him and flips a flipper in a motion so similar to pointing that Arthur can't help but look. His stomach drops.There's a dark, menacing looking cloud in the sky that had definitely not been there before. It hadn't been in the forecast a week ago but he'd had such a limited window of time on the island that he hadn't bothered to check today. Shit.

"Okay," Arthur says tentatively. "But you're going to have to get off my boat." The walrus snorts at him and tries to get further inside instead. "No! Out of the boat!" This time the walrus does comply, looking a little confused if Arthur has his walrus emotions correct. Of course, said boat is halfway full of water now thanks to his well meaning friend here, which sloshes across his laptop as soon as the walrus plops his thousand pound mass back into the freezing ocean.

Christ.

Rowing a boat is difficult. Rowing a boat half full of water is frustrating. Rowing a boat half full of water while trying to simultaneously not hurt and fend off a clingy walrus is impossible.

"This is your fault, you know," Arthur accuses once he stops for a breather. The walrus attempts to get his head up above the bow and Arthur only just resists kicking him in the face. "Do not get back in, or, I swear to god, I'll hit you with an oar."

\---

Arthur makes it back to shore just as the wind really picks up, thankfully. His work is soaked and his boots make awful squelching sounds as he drags the boat inland across the sand so at least the front half is out of the waves that are slowly getting more and more frequent. If it hadn't been for his destructive friend here, he would have had a hell of a time making it back to launch or even onto the sand as he had just moments before.

He'd feel more grateful if his destructive friend would stop following him though. The walrus flops up to him as Arthur takes a seat to drain the water from his shoes, back to the wind. Everything else he has hastily packed into his backpack but he's not making a hike to the single airstrip in shoes brimming with water. The boat he'll have to abandon. Is that rain? Fuck.

"What do you want?" he asks, a touch aggressively as no less than two cups of water pour out of his boot.

The walrus looks pleadingly at him.

"Uhm... Good job?" Arthur hazards, stuffing his wet foot into the boot again. "I hope we never meet again?"

The walrus makes a mournful sound.

"Are you upset about the fish?" It had taken its chance to swim away when the boat almost capsized. "Because you brought that upon yourself. Go catch yourself another one if you're that desperate."

A wet huff and the walrus starts waddling his way back to waves.

"And stay there," Arthur calls after before starting up the hill and towards civilization that doesn't consist of asshole pinnipeds.

\---

Arthur takes the four hour flight back to the Faroe Islands to dry out his things. He's miserable and wet after the hour long hike but his notes are salvageable at least and even his laptop slowly starts up from it's sleep. He quickly backs everything up and by time he's landed he's ready to forget that the incident with the walrus ever happened. He's ready sleep a full night and study the seals here.

Of course, it's not all that simple. He can't find Eames in their hotel. There's a short, handwritten 'BRB' pinned to his door but the hotel staff haven't seen him since the previous night. Arthur gives up and simply showers and falls into bed, leaving the organizing for another time.

He's up with dawn and walking down to shore. The seals here are all over the place so there's no need to get a boat, though he could probably charter a better one than the one he had the day before. It's all much easier and he's prepared for any eventuality here.

Yet he's not prepared for a walrus bounding up to him in the middle of the beach, scattering the smaller seals and Arthur's equipment, flopping over onto his back and begging for belly rubs.

"Holy shit," is all Arthur thinks to say. Did the walrus follow him here? There's no way. Walruses can't follow airplanes. But he recognizes the walrus - there can't be two male runts following him around and the scarring is unique - and the walrus clearly recognizes him. Good god. There's an upwards of 500 miles from Jan Mayen to the Faroe Islands.

He stands around flabbergasted for a moment before realizing the walrus is already irrevocably tangled in his things, earbuds wound around one tusk and pages sticking to his wet hide. Also snoring loudly, fast asleep.

"For fuck's sake," he sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. His laptop escaped the most of the rampage, small mercies, and Arthur picks up what he can, citing the earbuds as a lost cause but risking peeling off his papers off the cinnamon colored skin. It seems like the walrus did swim for a very long time. It's still not remotely feasible but Arthur can't help but be a little charmed.

He leaves the walrus to his nap and walks off in the direction of the seals.

Once there, he tallies the seals and notes any changes in health from a distance away, slowly moving around his tallies to be made sense of at the completion of the study. Eventually he just sits and looks at the seals a bit, admiring their cacophony and probably unintentionally photobombing the shots any tourists up on the hill are trying to make. When the friendly neighborhood walrus takes off with his paperwork, well, that's going straight to Youtube.

\---

Eames finally shows up when Arthur is eating his hard earned dinner in one of the restaurants in Torshavn. "Hey," is all he says as he plops down on the other side of Arthur's table and waves a waitress to order. Arthur ignores him in favor of his food.

"Sorry about disappearing without notice," Eames says eventually. "There are several more colonies on the island than we planned for so I thought splitting up was a better use of our time."

Arthur shrugs. "Your call. This project was your idea in the first place, wasn't it?"

"Oh, don't be like that, love. You've probably more data than I do with all my running around. How was Jan Mayen? Heard there was a storm."

\---

Arthur warms up to Eames a little during dinner though the wine probably helps with that. He warms up even more when they congregate in Eames' room to go over the data they've collected and Eames compliments Arthur's work, especially in the face of all the obstacles.

Arthur excuses himself before he starts feeling a little too amorous. Eames is even hotter when he's stroking Arthur's ego and Arthur should still rightly be pissed about Eames leaving him to do all the work by himself. Not entertaining fellatio fantasies. So he goes to sleep and dreams something even worse about walruses.

They comb their next beach together the next day and the walrus doesn't show. Thankfully, too, because he hadn't told Eames about the clingy animal and he'd rather not invite any smart comments about being a lady walrus or a walrus piper or charmer or anything of the sort.

Even so, he kind of misses the great big beast. It was silly and harmless distraction - his earphones had been the only casualty and he had a backup pair. Most people would love a wild animal to follow them around in a friendly fashion, right?

But the day with Eames feels normal instead of as awkward or annoying as Arthur had expected the trip to be. He's nice, humble even, funny, and not... Well, for some reason Arthur had been imagining some sort of combination of House and Shawn Spencer, but maybe that was evidence of too much time spent watching television.

Maybe signing up for this study was not only a smart move but a good one as well - he'd known that with Eames things would go fairly smoothly but he hadn't expected to enjoy himself at the same time.

Of course, that evening Eames announces he needs to leave for Iceland for another two days while Arthur can tackle the packs on the island. So much for that. The rest of their time is spent correlating Eames' data from his previous trip and by the end Arthur notices that some corrections have snuck their way into the data he had gotten from Jan Mayen. He frowns at it but given his good mood, doesn't question or bring it up.

\---

The first day is blessedly uneventful. Arthur gets up, Arthur counts seals, Arthur takes breaks to eat, Arthur organizes his data, Arthur does not, in any way, mope, at all, Arthur goes to sleep.

The second day starts off much the same way and Arthur is almost sure he can last the whole time without running into some kind of lunacy but his hopes are dashed when an overenthusiastic walrus flops his way over and presses his wet head against Arthur's thigh in what seems to be a nuzzle. At least Arthur had managed to salvage his notes but can't he just be left alone? Will this walrus ever forget him?

The walrus, having finished thoroughly wetting Arthur's pantleg, whistles at him. Oh jesus.

"Not a lady walrus, please move along," Arthur tells the animal, shuffling away a little on his knees. The tusk as long as his thigh is kind of intimidating. The walrus only whistles at him once more and sits back on his haunches. If Arthur didn't know better he would swear he's smiling into his mustache at Arthur's troubles. What an asshole.

"Look, I'm busy here," Arthur sighs, not really willing to leave his spot. The walrus isn't touching him anymore and doesn't seem violent so he plops back down on the tarp he'd spread out on the beach and cautiously starts his tallies all over again.

Now even the locals are amused. Apparently there's something Youtube worthy in a simple scientist doing his work next to a small walrus. Who seems to have fallen asleep again, soft snores emanating from his snout. It's kind of cute, actually.

Arthur ignores everything but the seals.

The walrus wakes up eventually and as the crowds disperse and the sun starts to sink he can't help but talk to the silly animal. It starts with observations such as "Your snuffling is distracting."

The walrus seems to huff a laugh.

Then Arthur's annoyance manifests again and he asks "Don't you have some lady walruses to be worried about?"

That gets him a walrus version of a gimlet eye.

"Eames was better company than you," Arthur says eventually, sighing. "And I thought he was an asshole. Now I kinda miss him. Even though I missed him even before you came along," he admits grudgingly.

He receives a light walrus headbutt for that information which is followed by another nuzzle and what seems to be a whine.

"Alright, alright, you're not that bad," Arthur capitulates. "But you do destroy everything you set your flippers on. And I'm trying to do work here."

If those aren't walrus puppy eyes, Arthur doesn't know what they are. He sighs and scoots over a little to make some room for the walrus on the tarp. "You're such a big baby. Here, look." He offers the walrus a glimpse of his notepad and the rest of the evening is spent explaining his research to an animal who not only doesn't understand him but also probably doesn't care. All it does is make Arthur feel fond for the beast.

Eames, as it happens, doesn't arrive on the next day. Arthur half expected this so he's not very surprised. It would, apparently, kill the man to use a cell phone. Or a pay phone. Even email would do.

So he takes his miraculously living laptop out to the beach where his walrus friend is already waiting for him.

"Morning," he tells the walrus and plops down to work. Arthur starts talking out loud eventually because, for some reason, he doesn't want the walrus to think he's ignoring him. He muses about work, the hotel he's staying in, his colleagues and Eames as well, as the walrus watches him work with more attention than Arthur would expect out of a wild animal. "You should go into marine biology," he tells the walrus eventually. "You'd probably be good at it. Better than Eames probably. But writing would probably be tough. Of course you could probably get a speech-generating device like Stephen Hawking. If you learned to speak human in the first place..." Arthur realizes this train of thought is going nowhere and stops it. "Anyway. You probably know a whole lot more about the ocean than science ever will. Too bad I suppose... Guess, we'll have to depend on Eames and his psychic powers."

The walrus snuffles a little in what sounds like a laugh and nudges Arthur's hand. Oh, he had gotten quite distracted from his work. They spend the rest of the day in companionable silence, the walrus doesn't destroy anything and, Arthur admits, is pretty okay company.

\---

Eames doesn't arrive on the fourth day, either, and after a morning of twiddling his thumbs in his hotel room Arthur wanders out to shore again with lunch and a fresh fish for his walrus. It's nice to have at least someone who's reliably there.

The walrus waddles around him in circles after he speedily gobbles up his fish and Arthur ends up spending the whole day there, saying silly things to the walrus simply because no one present can make fun of him for it. It's liberating even. The bellowing is now charming and the flopping about is kind of hilarious. He sort of wishes he had another fish to give.

By sunset, the chill is crawling into Arthur's suit and he sighs a little, rubbing his forearms. "I'm going to have to go, big guy," he says reluctantly. Maybe Eames has finally showed up at their hotel.

The walrus yelps a little as Arthur starts to stand and Arthur is forced to sit back down when he witnesses something that looks very much like the walrus' head falling right off.

What the fuck-?

Eventually his eyes process what seems to be a man rising out of a walrus pelt, a man that is spectacularly naked and bears a striking resemblance to Eames. Arthur pinches himself hard and when that doesn't work, rubs furiously at his eyes. This is too much like one of his fucked up dreams to be real.

"Sorry about startling you, darling," says Eames' voice somewhere on his right. Arthur looks at him, a little dazed, and slaps him, hard, across his face. "OW - what the hell, Arthur!?"

"You made me do all the work by myself, you asshole," Arthur starts, because whether or not this is a dream he wants to get that out there. "Did you just make up the other seal colonies in order to go - I don't know - cavort around in the ocean with the dolphins?"

"No, no, ow, Arthur, christ, you almost knocked a tooth out there. Jan Mayen-"

"You were at Jan Mayen, too, why couldn't you have just come normally, you prick?"

"There was a last minute change in the forecast and I figured you'd just go ahead with the study regardless so I was worried - for good reason, apparently. It would have been harder to save you from drowning with the whole tusk thing."

"You almost capsized the boat!"

"It was either that or you getting caught in the storm since you don't pay attention to anything bumping the boat."

Arthur pouts and looks suitably put out which is a little bit strange in the presence of his hot, naked crush but regardless.

"And then I couldn't know if the plane had gotten through the storm safely or not so I raced all the way here to check - I'm still exhausted from that swim," Eames continues, snapping his fingers near his own face when Arthur's eyes drift a little lower than what he ought to be looking at. "And then I actually had to go check on the Icelandic seals which is also quite a swim as I'm always trying to save on air fare... Basically, you had me going up and down the North Atlantic with your foolishness."

"It's your own fault you were too cheap for air fare," Arthur huffs. He is slowly coming around to the fact that this is real and that Eames is sitting next to him, on this rock, having just been a walrus. "And how did you cover such huge distances that quickly?" That seems like a pertinent question out of the ten thousand he has swirling around in his head.

Eames shrugs. "A better question is likely how does a human transform into a walrus and visa versa but here we are." That is fair, Arthur has to admit.

They sink into silence for a little, in which Arthur stares with consternation at the walrus skin and Eames bears with the good humor of someone who has done this more than once. "I totally complimented you to your face," he says eventually, squinting a little at Eames, who grins. "But you were totally making walrus mating calls at me, what gives?"

Eames shrugs. "It's hard to ask a person out on a date when you have two huge tusks and a moustache." Arthur punches Eames' shoulder hard. "Would you quit it with the violence? I mean it."

"You have some gall, asking me out after all of this. You left me to do all the work, stalked me, ruined my earphones and almost cost me a pair of nice leather shoes... What makes you think I would ever say yes to you?"

Eames only grins and catches Arthur's elbow as Arthur goes to punch him again. Arthur can't help but smile back and let his hand rest on Eames' shoulder. His stupid face. "Asshole. Fine. One date. But you have to tell me everything."

The sun is setting and waves roll softly onto the beach. Arthur's can't stop himself from smiling or make himself let go of Eames and Eames reaches out to touch his cheek.

"Of course, darling."


End file.
